Providers of lawn care services utilize a significant amount of equipment to care for the typical lawn. This equipment includes not only lawn mowing equipment, but also accessory lawn care equipment including string trimmers and leaf blowers as well as conventional garden equipment, such as rakes and shovels. Conventionally, this equipment, including the lawn mowing equipment, is conveyed to the work site on a flat trailer bed. Conventional trailer beds do not contain attachment systems for securing the lawn care equipment to the trailer. Often the equipment is merely tossed onto the bed of the trailer where it can be damaged from movement during transportation of the equipment from one site to the next site. In addition, the accessory lawn equipment, such as string trimmers and leaf blowers, take up valuable space on the bed of the trailer which is needed to transport and store the lawn mowing equipment itself. Accordingly, a storage system for attachment to a trailer is needed to store all types of lawn care equipment and permit that equipment to be transported safely and securely from one work site to the next work site. Also, the storage system should permit the lawn care equipment to be locked securely in place to the trailer bed when not in use.
Storage racks for garden equipment secured against a conventional wall within a garage or storage shed are well known in the industry and are shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,143,228. These support racks conventionally contain a series of tool support assemblies to which the garden equipment is attached.
Storage racks for the storage of other types of equipment, such as chain saws, which are secured to the side or back walls of a truck, are disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,007,568.
A number of different types of storage racks and containers for the storage and transportation of different types of products which are secured to the bed of pickup trucks are known. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,255,951 discloses a folding rack which is secured to the side of a pickup truck. Different types of storage bins, which are secured within a panel truck or van, are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,889,377. Other storage tray apparatuses secured within a pickup truck or van are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,830,242. In addition, a number of different types of carrying racks which are secured to a truck or trailer are disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,057,281 and 5,273,337.
Storage racks and storage containers secured to and on a vehicle, such as a van, pickup truck or trailer are thus well known in the art. However, specialized storage systems for storing lawn maintenance equipment safely and securely in place are not known. In addition, specialty storage racks which store lawn equipment and lock that lawn equipment in place on a trailer are not known.
Therefore, it is an object of this invention to disclose a storage rack for storing lawn care equipment.
It is a further aspect of the invention to disclose a pair of racks for storing a plurality of grass trimmers on a trailer.
It is a still further aspect of the invention to disclose a storage rack for storing leaf blowers on a trailer.
It is a still further aspect of the invention to disclose a lockable storage system which can be opened and closed easily to secure lawn equipment in place on a trailer.
It is a still further aspect of the invention to disclose a storage system for storing lawn care equipment on a trailer which can also be utilized for the storage of conventional gardening equipment.
It is a still further aspect of the invention to disclose a storage system for storing lawn and garden equipment on a trailer which also holds a cooler for liquids and a spool of additional thread for string trimmers.
It is a further aspect of the invention to disclose a storage system for storing lawn and garden equipment on a trailer which is easy to install and maintain.
These and other aspects of the invention can be obtained by the design of the lawn equipment storage rack which is disclosed by the present invention.